Tag Archives: education

Cuts, Education, Health, Social care, Third sector, Young people

“Sometimes I get cross with my parents because we don’t have a normal life.”

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Above, young carers talk about their role in a Carers Week film.

Next time you feel fed up with doing the household chores, think about Ryan. At 13, he cooks, cleans, does the laundry and helps both his disabled parents get around the house. His father has Crohn’s disease and his mother is disabled.

Aside from the physical requirements of his role as a young carer, Ryan shoulders a huge amount of emotional stress; life is unpredictable because his parents’ health varies from day to day. Getting ready for school in the morning, for example, is hard because he worries about leaving his parents alone and fears his dad will be in hospital when he gets home. The teenager gets frequent headaches, stomach aches and suffers from irritable bowel syndrome, all of which his GP says is stress-related. It is easy to see how being a young carer can adversely affect education, health and wellbeing and lead to isolation and anxiety.

Ryan, who is lucky enough to be supported by a young carers project run by the charity Action for Children, is one of an estimated 700,000 children and young people who have caring responsibilities. Young carers represent over 10% of the UK’s 6m carers, the group of people highlighted in Carers Week this week.

Action for Children is using Carers Week to demand that the government and councils do not ignore the plight of young carers. The charity has released new figures today which show that, in a survey of 23 Action for Children young carers projects, services supporting 1,192 young carers have had their budgets cut by up to 30%. A further 192 young carers are supported by services that have suffered budget cuts of 40% or more.

As Ryan says, he would be lost without support from his young carers project. “I really rely on that time with my support worker to express my worries. It’s amazing to share my experiences with other young carers who understand what it is like to be me. I love my parents but sometimes I get cross with them because we don’t have a normal life and I can’t do the same things as my friends. I used to feel guilty and bad about those feelings but after talking to other young carers I know that we all have feelings like that sometimes and its okay. The young carers project arranges all sorts of activities for us to help us relax and enjoy our time off from looking after our parents. It’s like having a little holiday away from all the worry.”

Budget cuts to support services for young carers save money now but run the risk of undermining young carers’ futures. As Hugh Thornbery, director of children’s services at Action for Children, says, there is already a huge danger that those who need care start relying on children and young people to support them even more as statutory service provision is decimated. This situation, as the charity stresses, effectively means young carers – many of whom spend up to 50 hours a week looking after a relative – bear the brunt of the country’s deficit and might end up paying for it with their futures.

* To find out more the impact of caring resonsibilities on the young, try also checking out the very good Victoria Cares site, a week-long campaign by children’s charity Spurgeons revealing a week in the life of young carer Victoria.

Big society, Cuts, Education, Employment, Health, Housing, Local government, Social exclusion, Third sector, Volunteering

What no big society?

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Amid the vibrations of doom and whiff of ennui surrounding anything stamped with the politicised big society seal, a new campaign tagged in plain terms as a grassroots effort to improve a neighbourhood is a bit of an attention-grabber.

Shockingly, no one’s claiming it’s part of some shiny new renaissance in volunteering that will allow the state to retreat on the sly, but a tried and tested idea, backed by an organisation that’s been doing similar, citizen-led work for years.

Quick – Dave’s on the line – he wants his big society back!

Today’s launch of Shoreditch Citizens – part of well-established community organisers programme London Citizens – follows an audit of 200 organisations in the east London area, plus 500 meetings to identify local issues that matter and train community leaders.

The Shoreditch arm is the latest chapter for London Citizens, an alliance of 160 groups representing faith institutions universities and schools, trade unions and community groups; the founding member is The East London Communities Organisation (Telco), the UK’s largest independent community alliance launched in 1996.

Shoreditch Citizens has high hopes in aiming to join forces to impact on poverty, poor housing and gang crime – around 75% of the area’s children live below the poverty line and four in 10 adults are unemployed. The campaign, funded by the Mayor’s Fund for London and £270,000 over three years from the community investment arm of Barclays Capital, also wants an alternative to the education maintenance allowance (EMA) to encourage young people to stay in education. There is also a plan to make Shoreditch a “Living Wage” zone, where everyone who works in the area can be sure to earn a decent amount to live on. The Living Wage campaign was first launched by London Citizens in 2001, which says it has won over £40 million of Living Wages, lifting over 6,500 families out of working poverty.

By December 2012, the Shoreditch engagement programme aims to train 300 community leaders from 30 civil institutions and hopes to impact on up to 15,000 families. All this is nothing if not ambitious, but if you don’t have goals…

Education, Learning disability, media & communication, Uncategorized, Young people

Art for autism’s sake

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Tim, 17, had not uttered a word for five years when he arrived at Beechwood College. Two years into his time at the specialist residential college in Cardiff, Wales, the teenager with Asperger’s syndrome started speaking. Two years after that, at 21, he passed his GCSE Art and Design with a grade B, had a work placement at Tesco under his belt and has since left the college and got a job.

Beechwood, a further education college for students aged 16 and over with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), uses art and creativity programmes as the backbone of its personalised education programme. Students study music, 2D art, 3D art, digital media and horticulture and learn to articulate themseleves through these activities.

Batik Tiger created by a student at Beechwood College
Beechwood College student draws pebbles after visiting the beach in a project led by University of Glamorgan lecturers working at the college

Earlier this month, to mark World Autism Awareness Day, the college launched a national art competition to showcase the creativity of young people with autism and related conditions. The competition project, Create! Art for Autism, is open to those aged 11 to 25 who are formally diagnosed with an ASD, with the aim of showing that art can not only encourage learning and instill lifelong skills but, as Tim’s case shows, also boost quality of life and future prospects. Shortlisted entries to the Beechwood-led scheme will be exhibited in a national art tour, starting at The Old Library in Cardiff and moving to London galleries from the summer.

I know my sister has developed a newfound independence and confidence thanks to activities from painting to pottery, bakery, art and horticulture during her time with the Camphill movement. The Beechwood competition gets my vote not only because it encourages young people with special needs to find their own voice through creativity and practical action, but because it aims to bring the artistic talents of the learning disabled to a wider, more mainstream audience.

Darren Jackson, principal of Beechwood College, explains: “It’s my belief that creativity is essential to those with an autistic spectrum disorder on more than just a therapeutic or enjoyment level. We have seen how engaging in such programmes can transform young people who previously struggled to make themselves heard.”

Jackson says stop motion animation is a particularly effective way of encouraging confidence and self esteem: “The use of this creative multimedia tool has enabled many of our students to gain greater confidence and self esteem which, indirectly has resulted in them demonstrating a greater willingness to share their thoughts and ideas within their peer group. Many students who in the past have displayed high levels of anxiety are now willing to record voiceovers for their animated characters and use them as a vehicle for communication.”

Competition entries in categories including 2D, 3D and digital media art, can be submitted until June 10. The judging panel includes Brendan Stuart Burns, artist lecturer at The University of Glamorgan, Lucinda Bredin, editor at Bonhams Magazine, Hugh Morgan, chief executive of Autism Cymru and Beechwood’s Jackson. Finalists will be announced on June 24 and the awards ceremony will take place in Cardiff on July 24.

Big society, Cuts, Domestic violence, Education, Employment, Health, Housing, Learning disability, Local government, Mental health, Music & arts, Older people, Poverty, Race, Social care, Social enterprise, Social exclusion, Substance misuse, Third sector, Wellbeing, Women, Young people, Youth crime

The cuts – an alternative

For those who’ve not already seen it, this powerful film presents an alternative to the government’s devastating cuts agenda. It features community groups and anti-cuts campaigners along with Bill Nighy, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Zac Goldsmith MP. Worth watching ahead of this weekend’s demo in London against the cuts.

It Cuts Both Ways…The Alternatives from Oonagh Cousins on Vimeo.

Education, Employment, media & communication, Third sector, Young people, Youth crime

Shattering UK gangland stereotypes

A powerful image of a black teenager, eyes downcast and his bare arm criss-crossed with knife scars, is among the striking images in a photographic exhibition about the UK’s gangland culture.

The photograph of ex-gang member Jean Claude Dagrou, who was scarred during a fight between rival south London gangs in his late teens, is part of Another Lost Child, which opened at the Photofusion Gallery in Brixton, south London, earlier this month. Read about it in Saba Salman’s Society Guardian piece today.

Big society, Cuts, Education, Housing, Social exclusion, Third sector, Uncategorized

Small steps towards a big society approach to learning

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There is something of a gaping reality chasm between the vision of the big society and its fruition, not to mention growing accusations that the concept is a smokescreen for cuts. The chasm between vision and fruition might be narrowed by better and stronger mechanisms for civic service – or simply more hours in the day, as big society tsar Nat Wei recently demonstrated.

However, one scheme that has slowly and steadily supported and facilitated volunteers to promote an activity – in this case, adult learning – is the Community Learning Champions project. The drive, a joint partnership between NIACE (the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education), WEA, lifelong learning organsiation unionlearn and education consultants Martin Yarnit Associates, involves people who become active in their community by promoting the value of learning to others.

Launched in August 2009 , the three-year £3m Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) funded scheme ends in March (but of course!) but its ripple effect has been felt at a community level by hundreds of people. More than 1,000 champions should be registered by the end of next month and, if NIACE estimates are right and each champion encourages an average 30 people into learning, 30,000 individuals should be helped into learning as a result.

Champions promote learning among their friends, neighbours, relatives, or workmates; they are trusted as they speak from experience and act as role models to encourage others to take up new skills.

Homeless charity St Mungo’s – which of course has huge concerns about funding cuts – used the Community Learning Champions scheme last year to recruit up to 30 homeless volunteers to become learning champions.

The volunteers, recruited through the charity’s client representative group Outside In which managed the project, encouraged others get involved in learning, anything from gym classes to art workshops.

In the film here, St Mungo’s service user Richard talks about his love of soaking up new knowledge and the difference you can make thanks to a non-classroom learning environment. As he says: “All the time I was homeless, on drugs, this is the sort of thing I always had in my head that when I eventually sorted my life out, it’s the sort of thing I wanted to be doing.”

Cuts, Education, Employment, Housing, Local government, Social exclusion, Third sector, Young people

A neet partnership

The Miller Road project, Banbury, where disparate agencies are tackling youth housing as well as training. Pic: John Alexander

Aiming to crack two of the public sector’s greatest challenges – homelessness and the Neet issue – is daunting enough. Doing so with a multi-agency partnership spanning the sectors of local government, charity, education and housing makes the task even more ambitious. Read more about the scheme in Banbury in my Guardian Public article today.

Big society, Education, Third sector, Young people

American idols: London’s US-style civic army

City Year volunteer Alex Scott
City Year volunteer Alex Scott

Alex Scott, a 20-year-old psychology undergraduate at Surrey University, is spending a year with youth volunteering programme City Year London. The project, launched in September, involves 18-25-year-olds spending time in London primary schools, mentoring and supporting those younger than themselves. It is based on a successful American model of civic duty that began in 1988.

I’m sure everyone is weary of hearing how they can make a difference. We may tire of saying that you’ve changed the world by holding the door open for the person behind you or by bundling loose change into the upturned hat of a homeless person. True, being generally polite and selfless to one another is an honourable feat, but I’m writing about an organisation that requires a little, no, a lot more, commitment.

I’m a team leader for an organisation called City Year, which has emigrated from the USA after establishing itself in 20 other locations before reaching London, England, and it aims to have the same success that it has achieved across the Atlantic.

This year, City Year London has called together a diverse team of over 60 young people to volunteer a year of service with the agenda of making a real difference to the communities it reaches.

Primary schools in Hackney, Islington and Tower Hamlets were signed up to receive a group of 18–25 year old full-time volunteers in their school to act as role models and mentors in the key stage two (seven to 11 year olds) classes. As Team Leader for the Towerbrook team based in Sebright Primary School in Hackney, I lead a group of nine volunteers who are there from when the first child arrives in the morning, to when the last child leaves when school ends. The team take part in after school clubs, breakfast clubs, spend time in the playground and lunch hall every day and are a constant presence in the classrooms; often targeting children that teachers identify as needing extra support that may have not always been able to receive.

But as amazing as this may sound, the volunteers that City Year accepts through a strict interviewing process aren’t superheroes, no matter how they may look in their uniform red jackets and Timberland boots. Full time volunteering isn’t easy; and City Year asks a lot of its ‘corps members’. Expenses are offered for up to £100 per week and there is the opportunity to receive a Citizens Service Award of up to £1000 upon graduating the year of service, but that £100 can only get you so far and the early starts and late finishes definitely adds a few premature wrinkles. So why do it?

I heard about City Year through an advertisement on a placement website, having searched for year long placements in London with the aim of taking a year out of my University studies to work in a professional setting. I was offered the role of Team Leader, and although I approached it with trepidation, I have been able to see the developments that my team have made first hand. Sebright Primary School has welcomed us with patient and trusting arms, allowing us to take real responsibility over our effect in the school.

First thing in the morning, the volunteers run exercise routines known as physical training with the children in an attempt to combat lateness. During the school day, each volunteer has been assigned the task of daily supported reading for Key Stage One children, and a select few have the responsibility of improving the phonic skills of students who require that extra bit of guidance so that they don’t get left behind. The volunteers have taken on the task of an after school club as well, a sort of ‘citizenship’ session where the children who attend are taught skills and acquire knowledge that will help them both in and outside the school setting.

What has impressed me the most, however, is how well integrated the volunteers now are with the children at the school. It doesn’t seem to matter how early they have to wake up or how late they get to leave, each volunteer will always have a swarm of children around them at playtimes, and will never be too tired to join them in a game or listen to their stories for the week. I will only be in my position as team leader for a year, then I will return to university, but I have high expectations for all that City Year hopes to achieve based on how my team have performed thus far.

My time so far with City Year has made me a more confident and self assured person, but more importantly, it has taken a chip from my cynicism and shown me that through spirit, discipline, purpose and pride, anyone can hope to make a difference to the world around them.

Cuts, Education, Health, Learning disability, Local government, Social care, Third sector, Young people

Autism lifelines at risk of unravelling

It is Saturday morning and 13-year-old James Hope is desperate to get to his activity club. His dad, Jim, reaches for his coat, but James is frustrated at having to wait. He stomps off to the car and waits silently, brows furrowed.

This scene takes place most Saturdays but rather than tiring of what other parents might regard as a mild teenage strop, Jim and his wife, Alison, celebrate it. James has autism and they are grateful that their son not only has a regular weekend activity but that he is keen to get to it.

But the kind of lifeline the Hope family relies on is under threat thanks to funding cuts. Click here to read my Society Guardian piece on how progress on autism is at risk.